Possessives

“The tool it’s self seems …”

Misspellings, Possessives, Pronouns

My wife saw this on Amazon.com.

Problem:
The reflexive pronoun is triply misspelled.

Explanation:
My wife was researching a carpentry tool on Amazon.com.

She was reading comments from those who had bought the tool when she came across “The tool it’s self seems …”.

The obvious solution is to replace I-T-APOSTROPHE-S-SPACE-S-E-L-F with the reflexive pronoun “itself” — spelled I-T-S-E-L-F.

What fascinates me is how the commenter managed to make three spelling mistakes in the process of misspelling this pronoun.

  1. Mistake #1 was to assume that reflexive pronouns are always formed by combining a possessive pronoun with the word “self”.
  2. Mistake #2 was to assume that a space should appear between such a possessive pronoun and the word “self”.
  3. Mistake #3 was to misspell the possessive pronoun “its” as I-T-APOSTROPHE-S.

Let us discuss these three mistakes in reverse order.

If we undo mistake #3, then we get “its self” — spelled I-T-S-SPACE-S-E-L-F.

If we undo mistake #2, then we get “itsself” — spelled I-T-S-S-E-L-F.

If we undo mistake #1, then we get “itself” — spelled I-T-S-E-L-F.

Solution:
“The tool itself seems …”

“… separate business at arm’s-length from …”

Hyphens, Nouns, Possessives

I saw this yesterday in a company’s announcement about buying another company.

Problem:
The hyphen does not belong in this phrase.

Explanation:
One company was announcing the pending purchase of another company.

The purchase required approvals by various U.S. federal agencies.

The buyer wanted investors and employees to know that it was legally bound to continue to operate distinctly from the other company until all of those approvals had been secured.

The complete sentence announcing this legal constraint was along the lines of “We will continue to operate as a separate business at arm’s-length from [the company that we are buying].”

The problem with this sentence is that the hyphen does not belong.

The possessive “arm’s” is modifying the noun “length”, but together they are not modifying anything else, so no hyphen should appear between “arm’s” and “length”.

In contrast, a hyphen does belong in a phrase such as “arm’s-length transaction”.

Solution:
“… separate business at arm’s length from …”

“… the areas first formidable competition …”

Apostrophes, Devolution toward Simpler, Possessives

I saw this in a press release today.

Problem:
A possessive apostrophe is missing.

Explanation:
The press release was about AT&T U-verse service in Nashville, Tennessee.

The full sentence was “AT&T has begun pulling permits in Nashville to roll out its new TV service, the areas first formidable competition for Comcast cable and the satellite TV companies that operate here.”

A possessive apostrophe is missing in the word “area”.

I believe that the number of people who write possessive nouns simply by adding the letter “s” is increasing.

I believe that this increasingly common mistake is due to ignorance and to the growing number of people who use text messaging, for which punctuation beyond a comma, period, exclamation mark, or question mark is often difficult.

And I believe that this mistake is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It is simpler to omit the possessive apostrophe than to include it.

Solution:
“… the area’s first formidable competition …”